Pay attention to the feelings that you will experience while reading the next paragraph: Imagine a situation: a girl Masha, she is 3 years old. She loves to explore her body, she enjoys touching herself, she enjoys being touched by mom or dad. And so she discovered that it was very pleasant when she touched herself in the genital area: she began to explore how it was more pleasant and how it was less pleasant. And then her grandmother finds her nakedly touching her vagina and begins to shout at her, angrily calling her incomprehensible words that Dasha had not heard before, beat her for something with a belt and put her in a corner. When my mother came home from work in the evening, she just said that you shouldn’t touch yourself “down there,” that it was indecent and shameful - but she didn’t say why. She only said: “I’m already tired of your whys - it’s impossible and that’s it - remember.” And Masha decided for herself that if she pleases herself, and especially if she pleases herself by touching her genitals, then she can be punished for it, so she must either not touch herself and not make herself feel good, or carefully hide it from others. What are you doing? felt it in your body after reading the previous paragraph? Maybe something has shrunk in the body? Now imagine that you see your child: a boy or a girl, at 3 years old, touching himself in the genital area and getting pleasure from it - what will you feel? How will you react? Will you punish him/her and tell him/her not to do that again, or will you pretend that nothing is happening, but you yourself will blush and everything will shrink inside you? What will be your reaction? How will the behavior of the mother and grandmother in the example above affect Masha when she grows up? Masha will either block her sexuality and be afraid of expressing her desire, that is, she will become a sexually cold “good girl,” or Masha will rebel against her mother and grandmother, and then her behavior will become deliberately sexual; with very severe trauma at this age, Masha may choose a career as a prostitute (or think about it), in which her ambivalence towards sexuality will be intensified: the understanding that sexuality is dirty, and the rebellion against this “dirty” - “Yes, I am like that!” If only the mother and grandmother from the example above were familiar with the works of Freud, then they would know that Masha’s behavior is completely natural, because, according to the theory of psychoanalysis, a child from 3 to 5 years old goes through the so-called phallic stage, at which the genitals become the object of her interest: the child begins to pay attention to his gender, their genitals, and also begins to experience sexual attachment to a parent of the opposite sex (Oedipus complex for boys and Electra complex for girls). Now let's imagine that those prohibitions that exist in our society and in our heads regarding the genitals would be connected to the eyes! What if when in childhood we tried to open our eyes, they would forbid us to do this, yell at us and, perhaps, even hit us? And then after some time they were allowed to open them, but they would be prohibited from showing them to strangers: we would have to wear super dark glasses, and those who wore glasses that weren’t as dark as others would be considered “whores”? That is, everyone would walk around naked, but it would not be customary to walk around without glasses in front of strangers, and showing your eyes and looking eye to eye would be the most intimate part of the life of spouses or lovers? Do you think this is surreal? But, after all, eyes are the mirror of the soul, aren’t they?